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The city placed the 6605-pound remnant of the Courthouse bell in storage with the North
Western Manufacturing Company, and then auctioned it to Thomas B. Bryan of the
Fidelity Repository Company on December 16. Bryan reserved a small part of it for an
alarm bell for his own company and sold the rest to H.S. Everhart & Company two days
later. H.S. Everhart then melted the scrap down and recast it into commemorative
souvenirs, the most popular of which were tiny working replicas of the bell, which were accompanied
by certificates of authenticity, signed by the members of the city's Board
of Public Works, including William Carter (whose letter describing the fire is included in
The Great Conflagration Library) and Thomas B. Bryan.
Another souvenir of similar scale
fashioned from the Courthouse bell was the tiny fireman's hat in the insert at the upper right.
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Selling History 